Frail elderly 'terrified' of fee increases for residential homes

Updated
June 09, 2014 19:14:00

Aged care advocates have warned reforms to aged care funding - due to come into effect next month - will leave many older Australians too terrified to ask for the care they desperately need. The reforms were supposed to ensure aged care was more accessible to all Australians but critics say they will have the opposite effect: making it cheaper for wealthy superannuants and prohibitively expensive for many pensioners.

MARK COLVIN: Aged care advocates have warned that reforms to aged care funding will leave many older Australians too terrified to ask for the care they desperately need.

The reforms, due to come into effect next month, were intended to make aged care more accessible to all. But advocates say they could have the opposite effect: providing a windfall for wealthy Australians while making the cost of care prohibitive for the average Australian pensioner.

Deborah Cornwall prepared this report.

WOMAN 1: My mother's gone now, but she was of that generation where they didn't ask for help, they sort of coped on their own. And at a certain point she went into a nursing home because she didn't want to be a burden on us.

WOMAN 2: I think they're very stoic yes. My parents are certainly very stoic people. They've asked for very little. And they're very grateful for what they have, very grateful.

DEBORAH CORNWALL: Far from being an entitled generation, older Australians, especially the frail elderly, are notoriously reluctant to ask for help.

But aged care advocates fear it's this very generation which is about to feel the impact of a new user pays system. A system which will make residential aged care so expensive for the average pensioner, many will choose to opt out altogether.

CEO of the national advisory service, Aged Care Gurus, Rachel Lane.

RACHEL LANE: If they believe that the cost is going to be too high, that they can't afford it or that they won't get access to the services, they will simply self exclude and go without. That is the generation that we're dealing with. I mean that's just incredible to think that they've created a system that is so terrifying to older people that they will actually deny themselves access to care.

DEBORAH CORNWALL: Rachel Lane says while four in every five elderly Australians live in their own homes, most have to rely, almost entirely, on the support of families and charities to keep them there.

But with the predicted price hikes in residential and nursing home care, many elderly will feel they have no choice but to stay in their homes - no matter how dire their circumstances.

RACHEL LANE: They'll be at home, they'll be socially isolated. A lot of them will suffer from a lack of nutrition, a lack of hydration. That often leads to falls, it leads to all sorts of family crises as people try and fill the gaps that aren't being met.

The greatest pressure is going to be borne by families. At the moment the greatest amount of care that gets delivered in this country is delivered by families and friends, and neighbours, and volunteers from the church. It's not delivered by formal carers. And that's where the pressure will be felt.

Undoubtedly, when that care is insufficient they will wind up in the hospital system, which costs the Government a huge amount more than the aged care system does.

DEBORAH CORNWALL: Both major parties supported the aged care reforms aimed at making residential aged care more accessible through means testing.

But Rachel Lane says in reality the user pays system will be a windfall for wealthy superannuants, while the average pensioner will be forced to sell their homes to get into care - and many will even lose part of their pension in the process.

(To Rachel Lane): It would seem that these reforms have suffered from going through too many hands. They were pushed through in the dying days of the Gillard government, they've been fully accepted and adopted by the current Government. Do you think the idea that really wealthy Australians would be such huge beneficiaries from these reforms was every actually contemplated?

RACHEL LANE: No. I mean it's unbelievable to think that this is going to be the outcome of these reforms. And it certainly goes against the stated principles of the reforms, and certainly the Productivity Commission report, which is what these reforms were based on.

We just can't have people who are so terrified of the financial arrangements that they just don't get the care they need. I mean, yeah, I just shake my head.